Wake the Weary
by Sonsasu the Gray Daiconi
Summary: It’s not like I had a choice. Aid the hunters and have them unintentionally help me, or die. However, I didn’t think I’d have to keep us alive after our escape; not very comforting when five giants are breathing down your neck. Read FFN profile.


**_Wake the Weary_**

**_By, Sonsasu_**

**_Chapter One_**

**_"Salt Your Wounds"_**

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The explosive crash onto Choler's rock infested wastelands had nearly totaled the 7HC-Goliath.

While not one to express complaints over rough landings, having done a remarkable sum of them myself and survived, this was pure disaster. To damage a military, semi organic-dreadnaught, the most thickly armored mid sized ship manufactured by man that could remain airborne, was astonishing; and slid under a personal category of 'shit I never wanted to experience again.' Absolutely _nothing_ in a subsidiary mechanic's career could prepare said person for trying to steer something matching the equivalent of a twenty-gross ton brick hurtling through the air with unmovable wings, right onto a world known for vehement upper atmosphere weather.

Contending aggressive air currents had torn jagged sections into the spacecraft's frame, blades of wind ripping wild splinters into the metal like scalpels aimlessly passing through flesh. Battling for control turned those hairline rips into giant fissures. Though once free of that carnival of diabolic wonders, aerobics arrived. Violent, sideways spirals, jarring summersaults, and to top it off, a ten-point nosedive after an electrocution with a thunderbolt. Oh, that was _so_ much fun. The deactivation of the AI pilot guide was even better! In trying franticly to reboot the systems, I failed, and relived my greatest fear.

Dropping like a rock.

Now, consider this, please. I'd _failed_ flight class back on Sol Seve. No one had ever demolished a basic surface hovercar, 1HC-Pony, before; and on a side note to understand how serious this is, my instructor's face never lost that tic in her left eyelid whenever someone mentioned Robby V, around her.

Of course, back then, my being unable to get to work at Eastbay Techie labs on my own volition wasn't such a terrible blow. The transit AI was my best buddy. I had no issue with it ferrying me around in a common transhover. Life was fair in trading one woe for something else; it was, after all, how I'd gotten a chance encounter with a man named Donald McKay, who led me to realize an unnoticed affinity toward mechanics.

Put tools my hands, and I could weld any bit of machinery back together, yet set me in front of the controls to fly something without an A.I pilot guide, well, send a prayer to whatever deity you believed in, and kiss your ass goodbye. A renown I had lived up to if the god-awful trench length marking the destructive wake of the Goliath was anything to go by.

Unsteadily walking free of the cockpit animated with searing sparks spitting wildly in any direction, and dense, ash colored vapor bleeding hotly from damaged circuits beneath the flight boards, the blaring screech of three different alarms announced the violent impact, the ship's hull mutilation, and the leakage of either fluids or oxygen.

Brushing shaky fingers over a sweaty brow to wipe away the trickle of sweat, heavy eyelids blinked rapidly against the sting of smoke. Well, my vote went to the ventilation generators. Most of the complex system innards sat tightly buried in rather safe, compact areas that nothing short of a Plasma Vector Cannon could penetrate…or one of my more famous landings could pierce.

A pronounced limp in my right leg- a nice blood ridden shard of ugly gray alloy imbedded in my thigh being the culprit- slowed all progress to the lower section of the ship. Removing the fragment was definitely on my to-do-list, but the med bay was in the cargo hold. An area that held five possibly pissed passengers.

Reduced to a careful shifting of weight on my left leg and a hand on the opposite wall to make up for the lack of balance, two halls, some hazy minutes later, and I succeeded in arriving to my destination. Somewhere in the time it took to wobble to the bowel of the ship had seen to the loud sirens shutting off, their five minute duty of informing any survivors done.

"Fuck me upside down in a noose! I'm never flying another one of these monsters again; give me one of those prissy 3HC-Ceres any day."

Strained from the concentration of burning fumes, my roughened voice cut off and careened into a fit of coughing. Using the crook of my unoccupied arm to filter the air, fingertips hooking on my other shoulder to stay put, sensitive ears caught a series of vicious, short, yet loud sounds drifting through the eerie almost-silence.

I answered otherworldly rattling with the freezing poison identified as fear. Held in check with questionable logic, persistent walking, faltering steps really, constituted to help combat the urge to flee. After all the shit, the entire struggle I put up with in helping those ugly fuckers, why should I turn tail and disappear?

Toddling through waves of befogged air to the guardrail attached to the platform walkway, motion supped on my endurance greedily, blood loss turning it into raw fatigue. The semi dreadnaught's massive storage enclosure cleared up once I reached the safety rail. To remove any presence of weight stressing the injured leg, unforgiving metal bore into the meat of my forearms, taking up the duty in silence. Fuzzy vision lowered my eyelids into slits. Fuck, my head hurt. I went to take a breath via my nose, and found it clogged, not with nasal mucus…something gathered in my throat that was all too thin and coppery after pulling it forward to lie on my tongue.

Blood.

"Ugh." Both eyes squeezed shut while one hand migrated to disturb a pair of swollen nostrils with a prudent squeeze. Fire bloomed fast as a molten inferno across my face. Oh yeah, this was undoubtedly the result of an impact with a flying projectile. A stiff, rough dip in the skin informed me also of a generous gash crusted over in blood. Originating at the tip, up into the right slant and further into my eyebrow where it ended, any desire to poke further stopped immediately the second something warm and wet started to seep.

Lovely…at least it missed the eyeball.

Prying apart reluctant eyelids, and blinking away the fuzzed outline marring the picture outside my head, precious focus came slowly. I could see them. Three of the five were in the beginning stages of regaining their feet on the wide expanse of the black, grate floor. Easing my torso to lean over it, I located another, and carefully rotating my head, found the fifth just beyond him, behind a support column. George, Larry, Todd, Bill and…Bob, all names easily remembered.

George, a skyscraper mass of hardened muscle, outstood the rest as the leader. Dingy skin, a swamp decayed log of brown intermixed under a hue of tan, spattered with dashes of black spots, rippled an arm in a fierce backlash when he chucked a crate- a steel box larger than him- off his back. Snarling as he rose, those weird waist length dreadlocks heedlessly spread over his body during the movement. A commanding bark echoed off the walls for no more than the space of a heartbeat before growling responded to the harsh noise.

The first to locomote his ass to the call was Larry. Willow framed with a profound carmine red hide entrapped with the same dark dashes of black, the temperamental beast's color bespoke his nature clearly. Closely followed by his shadow, Todd, the several inches shorter and lighter by two degrees, version, was one I dubbed as 'laid back' compared to the others. Nearly overlooked by poor sight against the unlit section- the lights were blown- Bob and Bill, solid black twins, emerged on the opposite side together.

Those two made me uneasy as a candle's flame was to water. Not in the sense of concern for my life, no, that would be kind. It was the way their yellow eyes observed my movements, as if peeling segments of meat away…or clothes off, was what reversed hot blood to change into ice water shooting through my veins. My virtue prayed that was not the latter.

"I guess ya' smelly bastards're still alive."

From where I stood planted on the ledge, overlooking them, their reflective helmet eyepieces turned to target my form better than laser pinpoints. After escaping Colony Ridgewater overrun in masses of parasitic aliens, killing a score alone, outlasting even the trained military units posted there, and then going along side these fuckers, I had no right to want to shrivel into a dust ball and roll off. Fear, however, had other plans.

A repressed shiver did nothing to reinstate courage, but pain was the better motivator.

Five helmeted heads pursued each restrained step toward the stairs, never breaking cold contact from the glares designed into the alien shapes. Maybe pathetic hobbling appeared insulting to their _perfection_. Momentary amusement at the thought wavered to a nonexistent dream the second the decent called for stretching the upper thigh muscle.

Transparent tolerance buckled instantly.

If not for a desperate grip around the rail, squared edges biting into the tight digits, I'd have taken a jolly tumble. The sheer unanticipated severity stunned, overwhelming me, with the aftermath of intensified eruptions of pain to cleave my spine in two.

Holy. Fucking. Hell!

Acute flames, impenetrable as under-steel, burnt all oxygen from my lungs in a silent howl. Suddenly straddling that delicate crease between conking out, and clinging desperately to a waning awareness, iced fingers curled on the remaining stump of the rail as a lifeline. I-I must have slid, because I certainly didn't recall getting to the floor.

Blurry eyes locked onto my outstretched leg.

How I'd digested this pitiless agony as a half-forgotten panging was a mystery. Thankfully, the shard itself had moved very little. Then again, how could it do otherwise? The femur bone kept it motionless. If only the restored gushing of heated life fluid soaking into my scorched, azure pants would slow.

Licking dry lips and swallowing the jettison of upcoming bile, vertiginous sensations assailed invaluable balance to the point of nearly kissing the floor when I stood on a quivering leg. Damn, I loathed being dizzy. Quietly damming that barbaric river that knew no order by gritting my teeth and locking shaken hands onto any surface they could arrest, swimming surroundings went disregarded as dark smears in my single mindedness.

Let the ugly crab faces stare to heart's content, as long as they didn't interfere, life was grand.

The med bay was just under the walk ramp, an escape of impairment, bliss of a manufactured threshold to heaven. Searching fingers abandoned the side of the stairs to walk using uneven equilibrium. Staggering to the wall beneath their shadow, vertigo hit with the force of an 11HC-Ram ship.

My head, shoulder and hip absorbed the brunt impact to the thick, vertical barrier, left leg bowing to keep any support away from my right, and both hands braced flat, fingertips clenched on the smooth surface to avoid slipping. Paused to regain control in that position, concentration on the multiple signals thrumming against my senses did not offer a time frame, only that I had ceased to move, hastened inhales a demand from taxed lungs.

In the partial hush, soft hissing, a breathy whine of hydraulics lowering the entry ramp barely registered into realization. A wary, befuddled glance told me of their exit, if just by the outline of moving bodies walking into piercing light at a sharp angle. Seconds burned away, blood a victim of draining out a wound too swiftly.

After a restart, my brain whispered a thought of relief; with their retreat outside, there was less chance of a bad reaction to the medical drone. Meager personal physician knowledge only extended so far.

Setting one hand before the other, I shamelessly crawled along the wall, worming toward the raised panel that would open the door to the med bay. I'd never take another AI pilot guide for granted again. A clumsy, loose fist carelessly smacked the flat red button, turning it a glowing green. The soft whoosh drew my tilting vision upward, away from the wall panel, to see the last edge of the door sliding aside. Though all feeling in my fingers had expired to a dull tingle, they obeyed, albeit sluggishly, to clutch the doorway and help pull me to lean against it.

Too tired for anything more, I pushed my cheek to rest on the cool seal, one hand curled on the frame, and its twin pasted on the wall's face.

"Medbot, run p-protocol triage dash nine point…point-" My world went from upright to sailing sideways in slow motion. _Shit._ No strength remained for tensing up to soften the crash, just wilted acceptance. Shiny, segmented, silvery tentacles caught my body, coiling around it and under like a net. Unfocused, I watched the blur of four spindly legs of a modified A32-Spider Golem come into view.

"Prerequisite protocols are inessential for a Trenchant AI, mechanic, Roberto Veveldil the Second."

A single, bright red orb centered on my surprised features, the petit, glowing saucer set amidst a massive torso. Its sphere-like body rotated as it took several steps back into the room filled with medical equipment, pulling me along. Balanced on a seemingly fragile thorax fastened to a smaller ball that attached the rotatory joints of its legs, a new volley of small portholes opened on the rounded body of the robot, five more slender, silvery tentacles slithering through the air toward me.

_Creepy._

Incoherent murmurs came at hearing my full name, oblivion arising as a black tide to swallow waxy thoughts under a vale of darkness.

There was a dim portion of awareness, dim, flickering, and wonderfully small. It felt the touch of softness embracing an aching back, and it knew the adamantine, chill of rubbery tri-fingered hands curled around the figures of limbs and a body. Moreover, it knew pain.

A renewal of anguish awakened every perception to white-hot torture. Muffled, guttural screaming tore from my mouth. This was quite the greeting back to reality! Watering sight took in a nightmare of a familiar scene.

Pinned on a medical bed by a collection of motionless appendages, one padded end shoved between my lips so not sink my teeth into any flesh, upped the ante to the human need to struggle. Another wail, higher in tone, spoke volumes when I distinguished a swaying extremity mounted with an R.H.L.U, sapphire blue energy lighting the flat needle end, preparing itself for another discharge.

The abbreviations stood for, radical, healing, laser, unit…

If someone dared brush undying embers against your skin, their unforgiving burn, cauterizing and destroying, then you might understand why I began _really_ to vocalize my overview of just how critically it hurt as it began. The laser knitted the skin back together, my thrashing contained by the tri-fingered tips of the tentacles. If not for one holding my head still, and the second fabric-covered end shoved in my mouth, I would have been louder.

It took nearly all twenty of the Golem's arms to restrain me firmly. The aforementioned two on my head, two for each of my arms, four on my torso and hips, and three on each leg, not to mention the three working the tools to repair my injuries.

God, I wanted it to stop! I fucking wanted to crawl back into the blackness where nothing but muted sensation remained.

Watery trails slid down the sides of my face. Thought process dyed writhing, calls for the Medbot to finish dismissed with a buzzing whirl. Hyperventilation saw to bringing rainbow colored spots to an overactive awareness. It was like listening to every creak of the quartered legs during a shift of normally soundless gears. Worse, I could _smell_ the fresh layering of skin, ozone and burnt flesh, taste the coppery tinge of blood, and above all, feel it as the wound sealed shut.

Devoid of deeper external and mental sentiment, eternity passed.

Blinded eyes gazed at colored darkness, while screams and shameless sobbing filled my ears. Yet no notice came, no abrupt identification that everything had gone, fervor unable to dig itself out of limbo.

A strange uncorking from my mouth jostled a neck lacking resistance to the unforeseen turn, the gesture knocking some semblance of visual apprehension into my skull. Eyelids I forgot how to use lowered for a heartbeat, then lifted and stayed open. The Medbot's many arms had disappeared, leaving only a black ball torso, a red optic, and a sole limb that drew a white sheet over my bare form.

"Reserves of anesthetic agents are expended. I am incapable of administering what does not exist, mechanic, Roberto Veveldil the Second."

My last act of being awake was to stick my middle finger skyward at the AI. _Snide bastard._ Both jittery hand and head thumped, making a hollow sound against the pillow a hot second after.

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**-Disclaimer-**

**Sonsasu does not own Predator**

**-Claimer-**

**© 2007-Sonsasu owns Roberto Veveldil, the plot, and George, Larry, Todd, Bob, and Bill**

* * *

**A.N**

**Yes, this will become a yaoi later on.**

**Hope you enjoyed.**


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